There is no reason to put forward alternative, unhealthy, unnatural unions as some form of substitute.

Margaret Court’s recent opprobrium towards gays and lesbians during an interview with The West Australian has prompted calls to inundate the Australian Open Tennis with rainbows — a sign of solidarity against homophobia.

While further calls have been made to change the name of Margaret Court Arena, this debate has gestured to a much more troubling question: is Margaret Court alone in her thinking?

In her article ‘Changing Public Interest Law: Overcoming the law’s barriers to social change lawyering’ (2011) 36(2) Alternative Law Journal, Paula O’Brien asserts that ‘Social change lawyering is an entirely legitimate form of lawyering…’ I am not so sure. If ‘legitimate’ means always sticking within conventional ethics, and confining oneself to running cases which will likely win, then I for one could not be labelled ‘legitimate’. Against that, I reckon that the legitimacy of the law depends on it being available to all people. It is not. It probably never will be. To the extent that it is not, it is not legitimate. But I like the idea of the Rule of Law. I like Paula’s article too.

(Where Music, Politics and the Law crossed over and, despite the obstacles, art finally beat out the law and the world was better for it.)

Flashback to 1975. Bob Dylan is rollicking through America on his Rolling Thunder Tour whereby a cavalcade of stars and hangers-on traipse along for some fantastic shows in a carnival-like atmosphere. (Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Mick Ronson (Bowie’s lead guitarist), Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Kinky Friedman, playwright Sam Shepard, Allen Ginsberg, and Joni Mitchell among many others join Dylan’s merry pranksters). Dylan is back in the thick of things and his profile is as high as it had been in the mid-sixties. After years in hiding following his mysterious motorcycle crash he hit the road in 1974 for the first ever full tour with The Band, a huge money spinner that played large auditoriums. He followed this tour with the album Blood On The Tracks (1974) which beautifully and simply explored the complexities of love gone wrong. The songs were like windows into his soul, but Dylan felt the need to speak to the people through song once again. Perhaps something was missing for him. He had moved back for a while to the Village. Perhaps the ‘feel’ of Greenwich Village, a yearning for those heady days of the early 60s — that sense of improvisation, that can-do-anything youthful creative spirit — had flashed before him again and inspired him to write songs that explored public and not just private issues. Perhaps it was just a good idea at the time.

Before I became a lawyer I used to love writing. There are a bundle of little bound notebooks of various sizes sitting in packing boxes in the garage as I write this. In each are sketches, photographs, slippery bits of paper with random words taped or stapled in place — a poem here, an overheard conversation on the train scribbled there.  At the time I wrote these things I had no idea what to do with it all.

After I became a lawyer, I did a lot of writing. I wrote long, complicated letters of demand. I wrote statements of claim, briefs for barristers, affidavits for witnesses. Now and again I would write the odd legal article or paper for a partner whom I worked for. I co-wrote a couple of legal textbooks — a few articles on my own.  While I slept, words snaked round my dreams with villainous intent. With so much of my waking and sleeping time taken up writing and thinking about writing, I no longer loved it.